KRLemmons African American History

January 26 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – January 26 *

1863 – The War Department authorizes the governor of Massachusetts
to enlist African American troops to fight in the Civil
War. The 54th and 55th Volunteer Infantry are the result.

1893 – Bessie Coleman was born in Altanta, Texas, the tenth of
thirteen children. She will grow up to become the first
African American female pilot (June 15, 1921) and the first
woman to obtain an international flying license (from the
Fédération Aéronautique Internationale). She will join the
ancestors on April 30, 1926, after being thrown from her
airplane in Jacksonville, Florida.

1932 – George H. Clements is born in Chicago, Illinois. He will
become a priest in the Washington, DC area nationally known
for his anti-drug activism and involvement in the group “One
Church, One Addict.” In 1981, he will gain public attention
when he becomes the first Roman Catholic priest to adopt a
child. The same year, he will found the “One Church,
One Child” Program in Chicago at the Holy Angels Church, a
predominantly black Catholic church. His goal will be to
recruit black adoptive parents through local churches. Rev.
Clements will be named to the National Committee for
Adoption’s Hall of Fame in 1989 for his outstanding
leadership and the great interest he generated in black
adoptions. The One Church, One Child program will become a
national recruiting effort in 1988, and 32 states will use
all or portions of the program. Its originally envisioned
mission is to combine the resources of the church and the
state to the end of recruiting black adoptive parents to
provide permanent homes for Black children awaiting
adoption.

1934 – The Apollo Theatre opens in New York City as a ‘Negro
vaudeville theatre’. It will become the showplace for many
of the great African American entertainers, singers, groups
and instrumentalists in the country. The saying will
become common “If you made it… you played it…” at the
Apollo Theatre.

1934 – Huey “Piano” Smith is born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He will
become a Rhythm and Blues pianist and will be best known for
his recording of “Having a Good Time.” In 2000, he will be
honored with a Pioneer Award by the Rhythm and Blues
Foundation.

1943 – Sherian Grace Cadoria is born in Marksville, Louisiana. She
will make her career in the United States Army after
graduating from Southern University in Louisiana. In 1985,
she will be promoted to brigadier general, making her the
highest ranking African American woman in the U.S. military. She will be the first woman elevated to that rank in the
Provost Marshal Corps. She will eventually become Director
of Manpower and Personnel for the Organization of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. General Cadoria will say that she has
“gotten more pressure from being a woman in a man’s world
than from being black.” She will accomplish many firsts:
she will be the first woman to command a battalion; the
first woman to command a criminal investigation brigade; the
first African American woman director for the Joint Chiefs
of Staff; and the first woman to attend the Army’s top
colleges, Command and General Staff College and the U.S.
Army War College. She will be the senior African American
female general in the U.S. Armed Forces upon her retirement
in November 1990 after serving 29 years. Following
retirement, General Cadoria will found her own business,
Cadoria Speaker and Consultancy Service. On November 11,
2002, she will become the first woman and the first African
American inducted into the Louisiana Military Veterans Hall
of Honor.

1944 – Angela Yvonne Davis is born in Birmingham, Alabama. Active
in civil rights demonstrations and in the Student Non-
Violent Coordinating Committee, she will be fired twice
from the University of California at Los Angeles because of
her Communist Party affiliation and she will successfully
sue for reinstatement. A philosopher and author, she will
flee the law after being implicated in the 1970 Soledad
Brothers shooting. After sixteen months in jail, she will
be acquitted of all charges.

1958 – Anita Baker is born in Toledo, Ohio. A singer of ballads
and jazz-inspired Rhythm and Blues, her 1986 album “Rapture”
will sell five million copies and earn her a 1987 Grammy.
She will win two more in 1989.

1970 – Kirk Franklin is born in Ft. Worth, Texas. He will become a
Grammy Award winning, platinum-selling musician who will
blend gospel, hip hop, and Rhythm & Blues in the 1990s. He
will release his first gospel album, “Kirk Franklin &
Family,” in 1993, and will be known as the leader of
contemporary gospel choirs such as Kirk Franklin & the
Family, Kirk Franklin’s Nu Nation, God’s Property and Kirk
Franklin Presents 1NC. He will integrate hip hop styles
with gospel themes in albums such as “The Nu Nation Project
and God’s Property, which will achieve success on the
Billboard Pop Album, Rhythm & Blues and gospel charts. He
will collaborate with the biggest names in gospel music,
including Mary Mary, Tonex, Donnie McClurkin, Richard
Smallwood, Crystal Lewis, Pastor Shirley Caesar, tobyMac,
Jaci Valesquez, and Willie Neal Johnson. He will also
display a willingness to collaborate with artists from the
secular realm, including Bono, Mary J. Blige, and R. Kelly
on the hit single from his album Nu Nation Project, “Lean
on Me.”

1990 – Elaine Weddington Steward is named assistant general manager
of the Boston Red Sox. She becomes the first African
American female executive of a professional baseball
organization.

2005 – Dr. Condoleezza Rice is confirmed by the U.S. Senate as
Secretary of State. She becomes the first African American
woman to hold this post.

2010 – Paul R. Jones, a collector of African American art who donated
thousands of works to universities in Delaware and Alabama,
joins the ancestors in Atlanta, Georgia, at the age of 81.
“My goal has been to incorporate African American art into
American art,” he told The Tuscaloosa News in 2008 when he
made his donation to the University of Alabama with a plan for
it to be part of the curriculum. He embraced the school even
though he was turned down by the University of Alabama Law
School in 1949 after it discovered he was Black.

Information retrieved from the Munirah Chronicle and is edited by Mr. Rene’ A. Perry.

KRLemmons African American History

June 29 African American Historical Events

* Today in Black History – June 29 *

1868 – The Louisiana legislature meets in New Orleans. The
temporary chairman of the house is an African American
representative, R.H. Isabelle. Oscar J. Dunn presides
over the senate. Seven of the thirty-six senators are
African American. Thirty-five of the 101
representatives are African American.

1886 – James Van Der Zee is born in Lenox, Massachusetts. He
will become one of America’s foremost photographers and
a major chronicler of the visual history of the Harlem
Renaissance. His photographic subjects will include
Marcus Garvey, Madame C.J. Walker, Bill “Bojangles”
Robinson, Countee Cullen, Daddy Grace and many others.
He will obtain national recognition at age 82 when his
collection of 75,000 photographs, spanning a period of
six decades of African American life, is discovered by
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His photos will be
featured in 1969 as part of the “Harlem on my Mind”
exhibition. From the 1970s until he joins the ancestors
on May 15, 1983, Van Der Zee will photograph many
celebrities who had come across his work and promoted
him throughout the country.

1919 – Lloyd Richards is born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His
family will move to Detroit, Michigan soon after he is
born. After graduating from Wayne State University, he
will start a theater group in Detroit with a handful of
friends and classmates. At that time, the American theater
will be entirely centered in New York City. Richards will
move there in 1947 to pursue an acting career. Roles for
African American actors will be hard to come by, but he
will work on Broadway in “Freight and The Egghead” and on
radio throughout the 1950s. He will also teach acting and
direct off-Broadway productions. In 1958, he will become
the first person of African descent to direct a Broadway
play in modern times when he galvanizes Broadway with his
production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”
This production, a realistic portrayal of a contemporary
Black working class family in Chicago, will begin a new era
in the representation of African Americans on the American
stage. In the 1960s, he will direct the Broadway productions
“The Long Dream,” “The Moon Besieged,” “I Had a Ball” and
“The Yearling.” In 1966, he will become head of the actor
training program at New York University’s School of the Arts.
He will be Professor of Theater and Cinema at Hunter College
in New York City when he is tapped to become dean of the
prestigious Yale University School of Drama in 1979. At the
same time he will become Artistic Director of the highly
influential Yale Repertory theater. Throughout his career,
he will seek to discover and develop new plays and
playwrights, as Artistic Director of the National Playwrights
Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theatre Center, as
a member of the Playwrights’ selection committee of the
Rockefeller Foundation and of the New American Plays program
of the Ford Foundation. His long search for a major new
American playwright will bear fruit with the 1984 production
of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” by August Wilson. Throughout
the 1980s and into the ’90s, he will direct the Yale Rep and
New York productions of the successive installments of August
Wilson’s multi-part chronicle of African American life. The
plays in this cycle will include “Fences,” “Joe Turner’s Come
and Gone,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Two Trains Running” and “Seven
Guitars.” His productions for television include segments of
“Roots: The Next Generation,” “Bill Moyers’ Journal” and
“Robeson,” a presentation on the life of the African American
actor and activist Paul Robeson, who will be an early
inspiration for the young Lloyd Richards. He will also deal
with Robeson’s life and legacy in the 1977 theatrical
production “Paul Robeson.” He will be the recipient of the
Pioneer Award of AUDELCO, the Frederick Douglass Award and,
in 1993, will be awarded the National Medal of the Arts. He
will also serve as President of the Society of Stage Directors
and Choreographers. In 1991, he will retire from his posts as
Dean of the Yale University School of Drama and as Artistic
Director of Yale Rep, but he will remain Professor Emeritus at
Yale University, and continue to teach, direct, and search for
new plays and playwrights. He will be inducted into the Academy
of Achievement in 1987. He will join the ancestors on June 29,
2006.

1943 – Eva Narcissus Boyd is born in Belhaven, North Carolina. She will
move to Brighton Beach, New York at a young age. As a teenager,
she will work as a babysitter for songwriters Carole King and
Gerry Goffin. Amused by Eva’s individual dancing style they
wrote “The Loco-Motion” with Dee Dee Sharp in mind. She
will record it as a demo and music producer Don Kirshner will
be impressed by the song and Eva’s voice and will release it
as is. This will be the birth of “Little Eva”. The song will
become an instant hit after Little Eva demonstrates the song
and dance steps on American Bandstand. It will reach #1 in the
U.S. in 1962. After the success of “The Loco-Motion”, Eva will
be unfortunately stereotyped as a dance-craze singer and will
be given limited material. The notorious 1962 single “He Hit Me
(And It Felt Like a Kiss)” was inspired by the abuse Eva
suffered from her then-boyfriend. She will continued to tour and
record throughout the sixties, but her commercial potential
will plummet after 1964. Little Eva’s other hits will be “Keep
Your Hands Of My Baby”, “Somekind Of Wonderful” and “Let’s
Turkey Trot”. She will retire from the music business in 1971.
She will return to live performing with other artists of her era
on the cabaret and oldies circuits in the 1990’s. She will
continue performing until cervical cancer stops her in October
of 2001. She will join the ancestors after succumbing to the
illness on April 10, 2003 in Kinston, North Carolina.

1949 – South Africa begins its apartheid policy of racial segregation.
This includes a ban against racially-mixed marriages.

1950 – Mabel Keaton Staupers of the National Association of Colored
Graduate Nurses receives the Spingarn Medal in honor of her
advocacy of integration of African American graduate nurses
into the American workplace.

1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed.

1968 – Marlin Briscoe becomes the first African American quarterback
to play professional football in the modern NFL.

1970 – NAACP chairman Stephen Gill Spottswood tells the NAACP annual
convention that the Nixon administration is “anti-Negro” and
is pressing “a calculated Policy” inimical to “the needs and
aspirations of the large majority” of citizens.

1972 – U.S. Supreme Court rules, in a five to four decision, that the
death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment which violates
the Eighth Amendment. African Americans and members of other
minority groups constitute 483 of the 600 persons awaiting
execution.

1972 – The NAACP Annual Report states the unemployment of “urban Blacks
in 1971 was worse than at anytime since the great depression
of the thirties.” The report also says that more school
desegregation occurred in 1971 than in any other year since
the 1954 school decision.

1983 – The Apollo Theatre, in Harlem, New York, is declared a cultural
landmark.

1988 – Motown Records is sold for $ 61 million to an investment group
that includes a venture-capital firm, record executive Jheryl
Busby, and others. The company, which was founded by Berry
Gordy in 1959, produced some of the biggest rhythm and blues
performers of all time including the Supremes, the Temptations,
the Four Tops and Marvin Gaye.

Information retrieved from the Munirah Chronicle and is edited by Rene’ A. Perry.

KRLemmons African American History

June 29 African American Historical Events

Today in Black History – June 29 *

1868 – The Louisiana legislature meets in New Orleans. The
temporary chairman of the house is an African American
representative, R.H. Isabelle. Oscar J. Dunn presides
over the senate. Seven of the thirty-six senators are
African American. Thirty-five of the 101
representatives are African American.

1886 – James Van Der Zee is born in Lenox, Massachusetts. He
will become one of America’s foremost photographers and
a major chronicler of the visual history of the Harlem
Renaissance. His photographic subjects will include
Marcus Garvey, Madame C.J. Walker, Bill “Bojangles”
Robinson, Countee Cullen, Daddy Grace and many others.
He will obtain national recognition at age 82 when his
collection of 75,000 photographs, spanning a period of
six decades of African American life, is discovered by
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His photos will be
featured in 1969 as part of the “Harlem on my Mind”
exhibition. From the 1970s until he joins the ancestors
on May 15, 1983, Van Der Zee will photograph many
celebrities who had come across his work and promoted
him throughout the country.

1919 – Lloyd Richards is born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His
family will move to Detroit, Michigan soon after he is
born. After graduating from Wayne State University, he
will start a theater group in Detroit with a handful of
friends and classmates. At that time, the American theater
will be entirely centered in New York City. Richards will
move there in 1947 to pursue an acting career. Roles for
African American actors will be hard to come by, but he
will work on Broadway in “Freight and The Egghead” and on
radio throughout the 1950s. He will also teach acting and
direct off-Broadway productions. In 1958, he will become
the first person of African descent to direct a Broadway
play in modern times when he galvanizes Broadway with his
production of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun.”
This production, a realistic portrayal of a contemporary
Black working class family in Chicago, will begin a new era
in the representation of African Americans on the American
stage. In the 1960s, he will direct the Broadway productions
“The Long Dream,” “The Moon Besieged,” “I Had a Ball” and
“The Yearling.” In 1966, he will become head of the actor
training program at New York University’s School of the Arts.
He will be Professor of Theater and Cinema at Hunter College
in New York City when he is tapped to become dean of the
prestigious Yale University School of Drama in 1979. At the
same time he will become Artistic Director of the highly
influential Yale Repertory theater. Throughout his career,
he will seek to discover and develop new plays and
playwrights, as Artistic Director of the National Playwrights
Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theatre Center, as
a member of the Playwrights’ selection committee of the
Rockefeller Foundation and of the New American Plays program
of the Ford Foundation. His long search for a major new
American playwright will bear fruit with the 1984 production
of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” by August Wilson. Throughout
the 1980s and into the ’90s, he will direct the Yale Rep and
New York productions of the successive installments of August
Wilson’s multi-part chronicle of African American life. The
plays in this cycle will include “Fences,” “Joe Turner’s Come
and Gone,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Two Trains Running” and “Seven
Guitars.” His productions for television include segments of
“Roots: The Next Generation,” “Bill Moyers’ Journal” and
“Robeson,” a presentation on the life of the African American
actor and activist Paul Robeson, who will be an early
inspiration for the young Lloyd Richards. He will also deal
with Robeson’s life and legacy in the 1977 theatrical
production “Paul Robeson.” He will be the recipient of the
Pioneer Award of AUDELCO, the Frederick Douglass Award and,
in 1993, will be awarded the National Medal of the Arts. He
will also serve as President of the Society of Stage Directors
and Choreographers. In 1991, he will retire from his posts as
Dean of the Yale University School of Drama and as Artistic
Director of Yale Rep, but he will remain Professor Emeritus at
Yale University, and continue to teach, direct, and search for
new plays and playwrights. He will be inducted into the Academy
of Achievement in 1987. He will join the ancestors on June 29,
2006.

1943 – Eva Narcissus Boyd is born in Belhaven, North Carolina. She will
move to Brighton Beach, New York at a young age. As a teenager,
she will work as a babysitter for songwriters Carole King and
Gerry Goffin. Amused by Eva’s individual dancing style they
wrote “The Loco-Motion” with Dee Dee Sharp in mind. She
will record it as a demo and music producer Don Kirshner will
be impressed by the song and Eva’s voice and will release it
as is. This will be the birth of “Little Eva”. The song will
become an instant hit after Little Eva demonstrates the song
and dance steps on American Bandstand. It will reach #1 in the
U.S. in 1962. After the success of “The Loco-Motion”, Eva will
be unfortunately stereotyped as a dance-craze singer and will
be given limited material. The notorious 1962 single “He Hit Me
(And It Felt Like a Kiss)” was inspired by the abuse Eva
suffered from her then-boyfriend. She will continued to tour and
record throughout the sixties, but her commercial potential
will plummet after 1964. Little Eva’s other hits will be “Keep
Your Hands Of My Baby”, “Somekind Of Wonderful” and “Let’s
Turkey Trot”. She will retire from the music business in 1971.
She will return to live performing with other artists of her era
on the cabaret and oldies circuits in the 1990’s. She will
continue performing until cervical cancer stops her in October
of 2001. She will join the ancestors after succumbing to the
illness on April 10, 2003 in Kinston, North Carolina.

1949 – South Africa begins its apartheid policy of racial segregation.
This includes a ban against racially-mixed marriages.

1950 – Mabel Keaton Staupers of the National Association of Colored
Graduate Nurses receives the Spingarn Medal in honor of her
advocacy of integration of African American graduate nurses
into the American workplace.

1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed.

1968 – Marlin Briscoe becomes the first African American quarterback
to play professional football in the modern NFL.

1970 – NAACP chairman Stephen Gill Spottswood tells the NAACP annual
convention that the Nixon administration is “anti-Negro” and
is pressing “a calculated Policy” inimical to “the needs and
aspirations of the large majority” of citizens.

1972 – U.S. Supreme Court rules, in a five to four decision, that the
death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment which violates
the Eighth Amendment. African Americans and members of other
minority groups constitute 483 of the 600 persons awaiting
execution.

1972 – The NAACP Annual Report states the unemployment of “urban Blacks
in 1971 was worse than at anytime since the great depression
of the thirties.” The report also says that more school
desegregation occurred in 1971 than in any other year since
the 1954 school decision.

1983 – The Apollo Theatre, in Harlem, New York, is declared a cultural
landmark.

1988 – Motown Records is sold for $ 61 million to an investment group
that includes a venture-capital firm, record executive Jheryl
Busby, and others. The company, which was founded by Berry
Gordy in 1959, produced some of the biggest rhythm and blues
performers of all time including the Supremes, the Temptations,
the Four Tops and Marvin Gaye.

Information retrieved from the Munirah Chronicle and is edited by Rene’ A. Perry.